War Diaries Talk

Lt. Col. Elkington

  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    I think I may have come across one of those situations where an event that occurs in one unit has an effect on another.

    This morning I have been tagging the 40th Brigade R.F.A. diary for Sept. 1914. I got to the end of the month and couldn't quite read the initials of the C.O., Lt. Col. Elkington. So I Googled him and turned up the story of a different Lt.Col. Elkington who, along with Col. Mainwaring, surrendered his troops to the mayor of St. Quentin during the retreat in August 1914.

    I then remembered this page from the 12th Field Ambulance that I tagged a few days ago which refers to two colonels and two other officers being locked up in an ambulance wagon of the unit from Sept. 4 to 6 because they are under arrest.

    I wonder if these two colonels were Elkington and Mainwaring?

    I also wondered if Lt. Col. R. J. G. Elkington of the 40th Bde. R. F. A. was related to the one who surrendered. I found that the latter was one of five sons in the same family who all served in WW1.

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Sounds like they could well have been the same people. It would have been fairly unusual to have many officers under lock and key like that.

    I can't find much out about the Elkington brothers, so it's difficult to say whether the two colonels were related or not. I'll see if I can dig anything else up.

    Although both of the colonels involved in the 'surrender' at St. Quentin were later thrown out of the army, Lt. Col. Elkington then went off and joined the French Foreign Legion, where he apparently did so well he was eventually accepted back into the British Army.

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  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    I thought it must be an unusual, if not unique, situation, especially at such a critical point in time during the retreat from Mons when I imagine every officer was needed.

    The O.C. 12th Field Ambulance seems outraged to have been saddled with this responsibility, but I suppose there weren't very many secure places to keep officers while the entire B.E.F. was moving. It must have been cozy with four of them in one wagon in that hot weather!

    I also tried to find some information on the O.C. of the field ambulance, a Major J. G. FitzGerald, but nothing has turned up. He seems like a feisty sort of person, thoroughly disgruntled by the slowness of getting what he needs, as if they were in London rather than on the move. But he also seems to genuinely care about his men and his patients, as well as the unit's horses. When in charge of a convalescent hospital in Nov. and Dec. he made sure that every man who was discharged to go back to his unit had whatever he needed in the way of fresh clothing, new boots, etc.

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    I'd love to have had the opportunity to meet some of these guys. Ah, but for time travel...

    There's an interesting discussion here (bar the odd idiotic comment), which adds additional detail: http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=176508

    Actually, Lt. Col Elkington's story threw up another one - Major Tom Bridges of the 4th Dragoon Guards, who arrived at St. Quentin and managed to get the men from the Warwicks and Royal Dublin Fusilier moving again, partly by putting together an impromptu band using instruments he 'liberated' from a local shop.

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  • David_Underdown by David_Underdown moderator

    FindMyPast includes the 1913 Medical Register which is usually very handy for identifying medical officers. But the only J G FitzGerald is the rather wonderfully named James Gubbins FitzGerald. Rather interestingly he seems to have been quite an Irish Nationalist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gubbins_Fitzgerald, but he doesn't seem to have been commissioned into the RAMC until 1915 https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/29224/page/6702/

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  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    Thank you for searching for him, David. I appreciate your efforts, even if they weren't successful. He caught my attention because so much of his personality came through in the diary entries.

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Reading some of his quotes, he certainly sounds like a man with strongly-held views who wasn't afraid to air them.

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  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    You mean Major Fitzgerald? Yes, I think he was confident in his opinions.

    On the other hand, the diary of the 40th Brigade R. F. A., under the other Lt. Col. Elkington, is terse to the point of being incomprehensible. The guns go into position, experience "No change" for several days, and then come back out for rest. Seldom any word about whether they actually fired the guns or not!

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    I know the official guidelines for diary authors proscribed a factual approach, but perhaps that level of terseness would have been too abbreviated even for them!

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